Joe Bast, president of the Heartland Institute in Chicago, has two well-written and highly accessible thumbnail summaries of the economic policies of recent presidents in the last two issues of The Heartlander. The first artcle, published in the November-December 2010 issue, covers Kennedy through Reagan. The second article in the January-February 2011 issue, covers Clinton, Bush and Obama.
One of the benefits of short, pithy articles like these is their 50,000 view that can tie several ideas and trends together. What these articles miss in nuance, they make up for in salience.